Psalm 124
Nisi quia Dominus
1 If the Lord had not been on our side, *
let Israel now say;
2 If the Lord had not been on our side, *
when enemies rose up against us;
3 Then would they have swallowed us up alive *
in their fierce anger toward us;
4 Then would the waters have overwhelmed us *
and the torrent gone over us;
5 Then would the raging waters *
have gone right over us.
6 Blessed be the Lord! *
he has not given us over to be a prey for their teeth.
7 We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; *
the snare is broken, and we have escaped.
8 Our help is in the Name of the Lord, *
the maker of heaven and earth.
August 18, 2026
I love that David is calling his country to admit something that is true: “let Israel now say…”
He is taking what happened and revealing how God was behind everything. I love how he is comparing the enemy to a flood. Something we call a natural disaster or “an act of God”.
David is their king and a mighty warrior and instead of spinning the victory to make it seem like David, in all his greatness was responsible for victory over their enemies, he is revealing that God did what only God could do. He is saying it is only because it was the will of God that our enemies did not defeat us. He is describing it as though they were powerless. The enemy was far greater and no match for them.
That doesn’t mean that Israel didn’t show up and fight. David still led his men. They still strategized. They still hoped and prayed. They didn’t just do nothing and hope for a miracle.
In the thick of things it feels like it all depends on us. This psalm was written after the fact. David has had time to reflect on what happened. And the more he goes over different scenes in his mind the more he is realizing that things could have, and maybe even by the numbers should have gone the other way, but they didn’t. And the more he is thinking about it the more he is realizing that God showed up and rescued them.
He switches from a raging flood to them being prey. Prey is powerless. Prey does not turn and defeat it’s enemy. Prey runs and fears the enemy. The only reason they escaped is because the snare was broken. It was the Lord who was responsible for that.
David was truly a humble king. Humility is not present during the battle. The battle is where you have to act as though your decisions matter enormously. You don’t have the luxury of saying, “God’s got this,” and becoming passive. You lead. You prepare. You fight. You make the best decisions you can.
But afterward, it is during reflection that humility is nurtured. The question that we can’t ignore is waiting for us: How much of what happened can I really take credit for?
David’s answer seems to be, far less than I might be tempted to.That makes “let Israel now say” even more powerful. He is not only correcting his own perspective. He is refusing to allow the nation to build a mythology around their own greatness. He wants the story Israel tells its children to be, “We fought, but God rescued us.”
There’s a really good modern application hiding in this too: sometimes we call something my accomplishment simply because we remember all the work we put into it. But hindsight may reveal a hundred things we couldn’t control that had to go right for our work to produce the outcome it did. That doesn’t erase our effort. It puts our effort in perspective.